African Time

I have now been at the orphanage for almost a week, but before I talk about that, let me tell you about the things we did around Moshi on Tuesday.

Tuesday

We first went to the headquarters for the Northern Diocese for a briefing on BCC. BCC stands for Building a Caring Community. It's basically a daycare for special needs children. They take special needs kids during the day so that parents can work, go to the market, etc. They have 11 centers in different areas for people to use and the resources are actually very good. There was quite a bit of equipment that I recognized from touring special needs facilities in the US. They also have OT, PT, and speech therapists available for the children. This organization is not solely focused on day care, but on educating parents so that these children can receive better care at home as well. We were able to visit one of the centers and all of the kids were very well looked after and super happy to interact and play with us. 

After visiting BCC we went shopping in Moshi. Since I can go into Moshi at any point for the next four weeks, I did not buy anything. I did, however, get to go in the Willy Wonka elevator. Chad took Kristian and I on this elevator and it was a tad sketchy. The building we were in had 12 floors, but they called the first floor "ground floor." The elevator started on the "1st floor." Elevators are made for handicapped people, but here the handicapped people would have to walk up a flight of stairs to use the elevator. Also, the elevator only goes to "floor 8" simply ignoring the floors above. Now as to why the elevator is sketchy, if the previous explanation wasn't enough. The elevator was a square attached to half of a glass octagon. As soon as the elevator starts moving, elevator music comes on. Then while you're going up you look at the building across for, you. It looks about the same height that you'll be going, except the top two floors are completely unfinished. You suddenly wonder if the top of your building is finished and realize that you'll soon find out! Luckily, the building was finished and we returned to the "1st floor" safely. 

We next continued on to the Amani Home for Street Kids. They house over 80 children and have classroom facilities for those children. Street children are not orphans, but have left their homes for various reasons including divorce, abuse, poverty, and even peer pressure. The home has both male and female social workers who go and find street children in Moshi and Arusha. The ultimate goal of the home is to reunite children with their families if the situation is safe.

For lunch we went to a restaurant called Indoitaliano. Natalie and I split a "sausage pizza" which turned out to be a hot dog pizza. After lunch we went back to the hotel, packed, and loaded the buses. The entire group came to the orphanage to drop us off and say goodbye. A few tears were shed on both ends as we said goodbye and of course Sue shouted some motherly advice out the window as they drove away. Natalie and I went to our "suite" to unpack, came to dinner, and then returned to finish unpacking. It was a very long day.

The orphanage! 

I am now officially at the orphanage. It is a hard adjustment and I have been a little homesick. The hardest thing to adjust to is African time. Even when we were on the vision trip, we were basically still moving on American time. Ours days were structured and we went from one place to the next without a break. African time is a much slower pace. Things are done slowly with lots of time in between. If you say that something with happen at a certain time, it likely won't be for an hour after that. While it is a difficult adjustment to make, I am beginning to settle in. 

The orphanage is made up of four houses, plus a college, and a new dining hall (which is still in the process of being built). The college is for students studying child care so they do their field placement at the orphanage. One of the houses does not have any children in it, but contains living quarters for some of the sisters, the reception, offices, prayer rooms, and a few guest rooms where Anna and Raechel (the other volunteers) are staying. The house next to that is the baby house where children under the age of 1 and 1/2 live. The middle house is kids from around 1 and 1/2 to 2 and 1/2. The final house is kids from around 2 and 1/2 to age 5. There are a few rooms attached to the dining hall and that is where Natalie and I are staying. 

When you enter our "suite" there is first a little common room which we share with one of the sisters who lives in the building. After passing through that you'll see 5 doors. Three of those are bedrooms, one is the toilet, and one is the shower. One of the rooms is unoccupied and Natalie and I each have one of the others. Another adjustment to make is that the concept of "homey" does not really exist here. Tanzania is a lot less materialistic than the US so they just have less things in general. Where the US would have pictures hanging, they have a blank wall. Where the US would have carpeted floors, they have concrete. It takes a little getting used to, and I decided to decorate my room a little by putting a scarf over the nightstand, tying a different colored scarf over the back of my chair and putting up some birthday cards that were sent in my suitcase from home. 

In terms of orphanages, this place gets 5 stars. The kids are treated really well and the sisters and staff really do care for them. I have never seen happier children. As well as the sisters, stadf, nd college students caring for them, they all take care of each other and comfort each other if one of them is upset or falls over and gets hurt. Not all of the kids are orphans in the American sense of the word. Here that can mean that a child is missing one parent or that the parents simply can't care for the child. Many of the children have one or both parents living but the family is in a situation where they either can't care for their child or can't afford to care for their child. After these 5 years at the orphanage, a lot of the children actually have homes that they can return to. Some kids don't even stay until they age out. Very few of the children have to be adopted as even those without living parents are placed back with their extended families. The orphanage keeps very good contact with families so that they know the best place to put a child after the most expensive and time consuming years of care are over.

Wednesday

Natalie and I went into the middle house on Wednesday. We went to breakfast around 8:30 and then straight to the kids, they're so cute and so happy. They just want to play. I wish I could attach pictures of the kids, but unfortunately I can't until I get home. I got hit in the head with a tin can by the youngest girl Ester. She was only moved into this house 3 days ago to make room for a new baby named Johnson. I also got to feed Ester her milk before tea time which was fun.

After Natalie and I cam back from our tea, Kelvin (one of the little boys) peed all over a chair he was standing on and then he and Ester both slipped in it. After they were changed we helped feed them porridge for lunch. I fed Ester again and that was a treat. She loves to hold food in her mouth until she sneezes or coughs and then it goes EVERYWHERE. 

Later that afternoon, Natalie and I were picked up by a girl named Aimee. We met her at the hotel a week or so ago. She has been coming to Tanzania for about four years now and works with different students. She also started her own nonprofit organization. We went with her, two Cornell students, and some local school kids to a hotel called Protea to go swimming and get dinner. The pool was absolutely freezing, but dinner was good and the hotel had free wifi.

Thursday

Thursday morning I did not feel well so I slept until 10:30. I went to tea and then Bob Kasworm (the guy from Machame Hospital) came to see us. Anna's mom had emailed him that there wasn't much to do so he came to help us out. He told us he would take us to Moshi on Friday. 

After he left, Natalie and I returned to the middle house to help feed them lunch. I fed Ester quite quickly this time and moved on to Elisha. He was just being very difficult. He sat on top of the table and thought it was hilarious to scoot away as I tried to put the spoon in his mouth. He was still very cute though because when his lunch dripped on my skirt, he tried to wipe it off for me. After lunch all the kids were napping so Natalie and I retired to our rooms for a little bit. We returned outside when the oldest kids did and we brought bubbles. They loved it! They each got a turn at blowing the bubbles themselves and I began to learn their names. 

It got hot as we played outside so Natalie and I went to get water and when we got back we helped to dress the oldest kids after their baths. When we finished, Aimee was at the orphanage with volunteers from the hospital to show them around. We went with them to each house. It was my first time in the baby house so that was really cool. By the time they left, it was dinnertime. We had to eat in the dark because the sun went down already and the power had been out in the whole town all day. The power was off and on the rest of the night.

Friday

Friday means the end of a week! Even though we haven't been at the orphanage all week, it feels like an accomplishment. When I woke up early this morning to take a shower, the power was out again. That meant no hot water. Right when I was going to actually get in the shower the power came back, so I turned the heat on and waited another 10 minutes, only for the power to go back off. Luckily, there was enough hot water for my entire shower!

Natalie and I went to the baby house for the morning. There are 8 babies. The two girls are Shangwe and Angela. The boys are Moses, Elisha, Baraka, Ema (Emanuel), Fadhili, and Johnson. They're all so cute!! After they went down for their nap, I did some laundry. I poured the detergent on the clothes instead of into the water, so my clothes still have tide in them...oops. Also, our entire "suite" smelled like tide. Then we went to lunch. We kinda hung out for a while after lunch. All of the kids take naps after lunch so we get a break. We found a cool bug and named him George, but we lost him somewhere in the common room. 

As we were about to leave our suite to go meet Bob, Pastor Urio showed up with 3 German bishops. Bob picked us up around 3:30pm and drove us into Moshi. We could see Kilimanjaro out of the window almost the entire way into town. Anna and Raechel stayed at the Union Cafe with Bob once we got to Moshi, but Natalie and I journeyed out to to to the Nakumatt (supermarket) and to find wifi. At the Nakumatt I was very excited to find a bunch of inexpensive British foods (TZ was once colonized by the British). After the Nakumatt we went to "kicheko dot com" Internet cafe. I tried to upload a blog post then, but it didn't work. It felt strange to be sitting outside on a street in Moshi, Tanzania on the Internet on our apple products, but there you go!

Bob picked us up from the cafe to drive us back to Kalali. On the way back we stopped at the "highway supermarket" for Anna and Raechel to buy a case of water. It was very entertaining to watch as communications failed and they nearly walked away with a tank of propane. The mountain was still out and we headed back up towards its lower slopes. It's sheer size and majesty is overwhelming and I just stared at it.

Saturday

Natalie and I thought Saturday would be a relaxing day because we had nothing planned. We were very wrong! After breakfast we returned to our suite and found George in the common room. We decided to bring him downstairs because he was injured. He flew away! We didn't know he could fly so that was exciting!

When we got downstairs, two HUGE buses pulled into the orphanage full of 23 students and their chaperones from an international school in Germany. 23 is a lot of people and some of the kids get overwhelmed easily. A few of the kids hid behind me because they already knew me, which I thought was cute. The students brought a huge amount of donations for the orphanage. They stayed until about an hour before lunch and the whole time they were here, Natalie and I played with the kids outside and answered questions. 

After lunch, Natalie and I went for a walk. We walked down through an "orchard" of banana trees attached to the orphanage and came out by the Kalali Dairy Cooperative. We walked down a small hill and past Kalali town center where the market is held on Thursdays. Town center may be a bit deceiving as a description because it was just a bunch of empty wooden stands. Natalie and I found a path that cut straight down the hill we were walking down instead of looping around by the road. We were feeling adventurous so we decided to take the path. It was really steep and slippery and we both nearly fell a number of times. A guy was waiting at the bottom watching us and as we neared we could tell he was making sure we made it down okay. He pointed out a better path to take as we got closer and we thanked him when we reached the bottom safely. 

We walked a little farther down the road to a bridge over a river with some cows crossing it. Apparently, the diocese owns all of the land from the orphanage down to that river so then we turned around and began walking back up the road. About halfway up, we got really tired so we sat on the side of the road for a little bit. A guy on a motorcycle stopped to talk to us for a few minutes. When we walked farther up the hill a guy called Frederick stopped to talk to us. He told us a little about the history of Africa, and by a little, I mean a lot. He must have talked for 20 minutes as flies munched on my legs. 

When we returned to the orphanage there were more visitors! A German couple and a bus full of Nebraskans. We returned to the room for a few minutes and when we returned Stefano and Elisante, two of the older boys ran at me and gave me huge hugs. I sat on the steps with about six of the older kids and after a few minutes I heard "dada, ona!" which means "sister, look!" They all began showing me their jumping skills. 

Soon we saw Helga, a little girl from the middle house, all dressed up. It turns out she was going home! It was very sad to see her go. The staff in her house called her name as she was about to leave to say goodbye and she ran at then and jumped in their arms screaming. She obviously doesn't know her family very well and she cried as they took her away from the sisters. Even though she's going back to her family, it's sad to see her go with people she does not know very well. But the sisters definitely made sure she would be safe wherever she was going. 

I have more to say about Saturday, but I'll have to post it next weekend because we're leaving wifi soon! Until then...